Visitors to the Google Play store were surprised on Saturday to see GarageBand, iMovie and other well-known iOS apps by Apple available for the Google Android platform.

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Visitors to the Google Play store were surprised on Saturday to see GarageBand, iMovie and other well-known iOS apps by Apple available for the Google Android platform.

Unsurprisingly these were not legitimate software offerings, and within hours they had been yanked from the virtual shelves. It has not been officially reported how many Android users were duped into paying for and downloading the offerings (they were priced at about half of their price on iOS) but they won't have got what they hoped for.

Even though 'Apple Inc' was credited as the creator of the fake apps, Apple was of course not responsible; but Apple executives may allow themselves a quiet smile at the occurrence, since it highlights the far lower standard of quality control imposed on Google Android apps as compared to the iOS App Store. Electronista quotes security research that finds around a third of Google Play apps contain malware.

I wrote recently that Apple would increasingly have to showcase this advantage now that Android has officially caught up in terms of app numbers. Quality is more important than quantity, after all. Particularly if some of your platform's apps are scam ripoffs that will disappear within hours.